Well, we told you the passage was wet and windy and we weren’t kidding!  It was a very cool trip though, sore muscles have relaxed, and with sleep caught up I figured I would tell you about a few of the amazing things that happened while we were at sea. 

1.       Dolphins – yes, I saw another pod of dolphins swimming past us one morning while I was on watch. It is still as breathtakingly magical as the very first time I saw one.  I always listen to the sound of their blow hole, amazing!

2.       The night of the flying fish… It all started with Phil below deck and a “splash”,”plop”, “flap flap flap” followed by a “what was that???”.  I took a look over the side of the boat and there were 2 decent size flying fish (almost 10 inches long) flopping around on the boat. It took considerable concentration to grab the slippery things but over the side they went.  Then my turn to sleep “splash”,”plop”, “flap flap flap” followed by a “what was that???” Phil threw another two over, my turn on watch again and it was more of a Bang, flip flip flip as 2 came hurtling into the cockpit with me! A tiny scream and then to action stations, both of those made it over too… but lest we forget the unlucky ones, the one trapped under our step at the back (oh dear, I still forgot to throw him over… at least he is pretty dried out by now), the one folded into the portabote, not the nicest discovery and the 21 small ones glued to the deck. I know there were 21 because I counted each of them as I peeled them off and threw them overboard. The best part was that one of them flew properly like a paper airplane!!!! 

3.       Our bird!!! Small, (about as long as elbow to wrist), black with a white tuft between the eyes, beautiful black almond eyes, webbed feet, pointy beak.  Poor thing was tired and wanted to rest on our boat.  First time I saw it as the sun was setting it came from the front of the boat and scared me half to death!   Landed and tried to stay on the hardtop, but was blown off, hung out on the dodger for a while and let me touch it!!!!!  It was amazing to see its control while it wheeled around at night, and it made me very glad to not be close to other boats when you realized how two independent things can move compared to each other.  Anyway, bird ID would be great!  That’s all for now!

The rest of Bonaire was amazing, we got laundry done and I have officially lost one of my favourite socks, was bound to happen.  We walked along the dusty roads back to the big supermarket, I had to drag Phil out, he was enjoying the airconditioning and selection so much!  We managed to get mostly ready the night before we left and just had a few jobs to do that last morning. 



The passage to Colombia was about 530 nm and we still haven’t quite sorted out the best way to estimate how long it would take, I am always conservative, Phil is always more accurate.  We figured on 4 days, but by day 2, we realized that if we had sped up instead of slowing down at the start we would have made it in 3.5, oh well.  It was an interesting passage, the first two days were past Curacao and Aruba (didn’t stop) and then out over the Caribbean sea, we saw a few ships and had to change course a couple of times, and ended up with a tiny scrap of sail up to slow us down enough to try to get to Cartagena by the morning of the last day.  It was quite wavy and you had to hold on, when the rollers went under you they were quite gentle, but when the broke just as they got to you it was loud and wet!  Realized our juice and milk storage was only good up to 20 kts, so the 35-40 was a bit much and I did almost cry about our spilled UHT milk, mostly b/c I was dreading how to clean it out of the bilge!  Getting close to Colombia was amazing, the smell of the land was intoxicating.  Then we rounded into the harbour and it was SO smelly, oil and smog.  The motor is was very cool, past old walls and forts, but the water is so brown (stirred up mmud/pollution?) that we couldn’t see and ran into a few tree branches along the way (nothing serious but hearing a bump sends shivers down your spine!).  We tried to call port control on the way in to be proper and they just didn’t answer, so we came up to club nautico and dropped our anchor. I had dreams of showers, a club house, a drink with an umbrella, and they were a bit cruelly crushed. Turns out Club nautico has been stopped mid rebuild so there are some plastic chairs and blue tarps, that’s about it.  We did realize that they have showers, so hopefully will take advantage of one today! 

I know I owe more about Cartagena, but that will come in due course!  Off to fill up a few buckets (including our “holding tank” which thankfully we didn’t need to us) with water.

Bye for now!